Anniversary Special Issue
Journal of Peace Research
2014, Vol. 51(2) 273–286
ª The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/0022343313516822
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A social science of human rights
Emilie M Hafner-Burton
School of International Relations and Pacific Studies & Department of
Political Science, University of California, San Diego
Abstract
Why do governments abuse human rights, and what can be done to deter and reverse abusive practices? This article
examines the emerging social science on these two questions. Over the last few decades, scholars have made considerable progress in answering the first one. Abuse stems, centrally, from conflict and institutions. Answers to the second question are more elusive because data are scarce and the relationships between cause and effect are hard to pin
down. Lively debates concern the effectiveness of tools such as military intervention, economic policy, international
law, and information strategies for protecting human rights. The evidence suggests that despite the explosion of international legal instruments, this strategy has had impact only in special circumstances. Powerful states play central
roles in protecting human rights through sanctions, impartial military intervention, and other tools – often applied
unilaterally, which suggests that there is an ongoing tension between the legitimacy of broad multilateral legal institutions and narrower strategies that actually work. The best approaches to managing human rights depend on the
political organization of the abuser. Where strong centralized organizations are the problem, the best strategies alter
the incentives of leaders at the top; where abuse arises from disarray, such as during civil war or fragile democratic
transition, the key tasks include reducing agency slack and making organizations stronger and more accountable.
Keywords
democracy, human rights, international law, NGOs, sanctions, war
Fifty years ago, when the Journal of Peace Research published its first issue, the topic of human rights was not a
focus of social science research.1 None of the core United
Nations (UN) international human rights treaties had yet
been created, and scholars did not yet pay much attention
to the one broad agreement that was in place: the UN
General Assembly’s Universal Declaration of Human
Rights.2 Amnesty International, the nongovernmental
organization (NGO) that today is most prominently
linked to human rights causes, had just been founded
but had not issued its first reports. Elaborate enforcement
mechanisms, such as the International Criminal Court
1
Human rights include a broad array of civil and political as well as
economic, social, and cultural rights often expressed and guaranteed
by law.
2
The first, the International Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Racial Discrimination, was established in December 1965
and came into force in 1969.
(ICC), were still decades away from existence. Scholars
focused on other topics, notably the Cold War.
All that has changed. There are dozens of major international human rights legal instruments in force today,
and hundreds of other agreements and mechanisms now
lead to a rich complex of legal institutions. Those instruments have codified dozens of rights and created
mechanisms such as courts to enforce compliance. In
addition to efforts on the international stage, governments themselves have created national human rights
institutions and thousands of NGOs have emerged with
the central goal of advocating for human rights norms,
shaming governments that violate those norms, and providing services to human rights victims. This upsurge in
political and institutional activity has inspired waves of
social science research on the causes, impacts, and
Corresponding author:
[email protected]
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274
remedies for human rights violations. The field of study
today is vast, encompassing every methodology and facet
of research imaginable.
This article evaluates this emerging field of scholarship. The bulk of research has revolved around two
major questions. First, what motivates human rights
abuses such as murder, torture, and political imprisonment and other forms of political terror? Social science
has made big strides on answering this question. One
of the most significant answers is that conflicts, such as
war and political dissent, create particular opportunities
and incentives for abuse; another major answer focuses
on failures and perversities in state institutions. The first
section of this article explores in detail the central lessons
from the scholarship on these two causes of abuse, which
are that violent conflict breeds cycles of terror that are
difficult to interrupt, efforts to transition to and institutionalize democracy often incite violence, and not all
alternatives to democracy are equally repressive.
More recently scholars have turned to a much harder
question: which strategies actually prevent and reverse
political terror? There is a long list of tools that might
promote human rights; among the most studied are
military intervention, economic policy, law, and strategies to collect and deploy information. However, the
academic community has not yet developed consensus
on which of these tools actually work to improve
human rights under different circumstances. Yet the
answers to this second question are of greatest importance to the spread of human rights. That lack of consensus reflects both the difficulty of measuring the
causal impact of any single human rights promotion
tool and also the fledgling state of research. The
research does reveal some tendencies, such as to identify
the scope of the impact of international law – especially
as law has expanded to label all manner of human wellbeing a ‘human right’. Another tendency is to look at
the interaction between key actors – such as powerful
states that want to use their own resources to promote
human rights abroad and also NGOs that build incountry human rights institutions – and international
legal norms. Most of this essay explores and evaluates
the lively set of debates that have focused on this crucial
question. The clear message about prevention efforts is
that not a single tool consistently promotes or protects
human rights. Rather, they all have extensive scope conditions and trade-offs that limit their effect.
Putting the answers to both questions together, perhaps the most important message to emerge from
the body of research is that there are two very different
drivers of abuse. One is a strong, centralized organization
– whether that be a state, a rebel group or another group
– that gives orders from the top down to commit atrocity
and repress the opposition. The other is a weak organization characterized by agency slack, a lack of capacity to
give and implement orders, and thus unmonitored activity. These two fundamentally different contexts that
fuel political terror require fundamentally different
approaches to intervention and norms promotion. The
former requires changing the preferences and incentives
of those giving the orders at the top. The latter requires
institutional reform, a chain of command, reducing
agency slack, and building capacity. This insight helps
to explain why there is no single effective tool to promote
human rights in every situation, and why certain promotion tools work in some contexts and fail – or even backfire – in others. This insight also helps to explain why
advocates can at times find themselves in the awkward
situation where efforts to protect one type of human
rights may require the sacrifice of another type, even
though human rights are conceived by international law
to be universal and indivisible.
I close with a few ideas about the future of social science research on human rights.
What motivates human rights abuse?
In this first section I consider the most important lessons
about two central causes of human rights abuse: conflict
and institutions. While there are many other drivers –
including poverty, inequality, and intolerance – these
two have attracted the bulk of scholarly attention.
Conflict
Scholars now know with high certainty that one of the
most significant predictors of political terror is violent
conflict. The central insight about violent conflict is that
it creates cycles of human rights abuse that are difficult to
interrupt. Conflicts such as war create opportunities for
political terror. Societies at war are much more likely
than those at peace to witness atrocities; cultures of violence tend to reproduce violence (Poe & Tate, 1994;
Goldhagen, 1996). Often, women are among the most
vulnerable to abuse – especially sexual violence (Cohen
& Green, 2012). Sexual violence in times of conflict can
be premeditated and strategic: security forces consciously
organize and carry out campaigns of rape of women and
girls as a weapon of war. Other times, sexual violence
during wartime results from agency slack. Security forces
operate in an environment where information is highly
constrained and bureaucratic control over their actions
is weak. They use violence against women to satisfy their
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275
own motivations rather than to pursue an organized strategic goal sanctioned by their leaders. In fact, sexual violence against women is highly correlated both with the
presence of violent civil conflict and large numbers of
military personnel and also with political environments
characterized by high levels of corruption and bureaucratic slack (Butler, Gluch & Mitchell, 2007).
It may seem obvious that conflict breeds political terror. Less obvious is that political terror increases the risk
and violence of war. Terror, especially when administered by the state, can incite civilians to openly challenge
the government and generate dissident violence. Once
people are mobilized in dissent and willing to engage
in violence, the state is likely to respond with yet more
violence.3 The risk of all-out civil war grows as both (all)
sides of a conflict escalate violence (Young, 2013). Stateled terror tactics also create dangers for international
peace and stability. They significantly increase the odds
that a state will get involved in violent interstate conflict:
‘human rights rogues’ are more likely to go to war. The
domestic norms and values that govern local conflict politics also shape (or perhaps mirror) how states operate at
the international level when faced with the challenges of
conflict. Violent social models at home may animate
states in conflict to refuse peaceful settlements in favor
of violent solutions (Caprioli & Trumbore, 2006).
State institutions
The other major cause of political terror that has been
the subject of substantial research is weak or overly powerful state institutions. The relationship between state
institutions and protections for human rights depends
on the structure and capacity of institutions. Scholars
have learned a tremendous amount about these relationships in the past few decades. The central insight about
state institutions is that, while fully developed democracy
may be the best hope for the promotion and protection of
human rights, efforts to transition to and institutionalize
democracy often incite violence, and the alternatives to
democracy are not all equally adverse for human rights.
It is widely established that democracy is a system of
governance well suited for the promotion and protection
of human rights (Poe & Tate, 1994; Cingranelli &
Richards, 1999; Davenport, 2007a). Liberal democracy
is a form of government built on the recognition of
the inalienable right to human dignity (Howard &
Donnelly, 1986). Incentives built into that system
encourage transparency and offer judicious means to
resolve the types of internal tensions that otherwise
could degenerate into conflict (Henderson, 1999). The
evidence is undisputable that censorship, torture, and
mass killings, for instance, happen much more frequently in countries with no access to stable democratic
political representation (Poe & Tate, 1994; Davenport,
1996; Zanger, 2000; Harff, 2003).
Even so, the scholarly community has discovered that a
state’s ‘democrativeness’ and its respect for human rights
are not strictly proportional. Only the most liberal and
established democracies regularly protect human rights
(Davenport & Armstrong, 2004) and few states fit this
description.4 Within democracies, the composition of the
legislature matters a great deal. For instance, countries
with parliaments composed of greater female representation are much less likely to engage in abuses such as extrajudicial murder and torture (Bueno de Mesquita et al.,
2005) (the same does not appear to hold for female executives, though this proposition is hard to test historically
because there are so few women heads of state). Moreover,
democratization – that is, a country’s progress toward
democracy – is not necessarily good for human rights in
the short run (Fein, 1995; Regan & Henderson, 2002).
Democratization can threaten incumbent leaders, who
then resort to abuses in order to hold on to power. Threatened leaders can also encourage nationalism, which in
turn can lead to conflicts and abuse (Snyder, 2000).
It is now also established that democratic elections are
not necessarily effective for the promotion of human
rights. Even in democratic settings, where the system is
perceived as winner takes all, elections can spark political
terror. For example, presidential elections are associated
with repression of essential rights, such as the protection
of a person’s physical integrity, in the years following the
election. That is because the power of office is tremendous – cabinets are frequently hand-picked ‘yes’ men –
and removing a president from office is difficult. Lacking
strong accountability, the zero-sum election process can
foster incentives for abuse. Elections are not always bad,
of course. National legislative elections are associated
with more respect for human rights. Perhaps that association is because these politicians genuinely represent the
will of the people, and that will is for the people’s rights
to be protected (Richards & Gelleny, 2007). Even in
some autocratic settings, national elections are associated
with a decline in the repression of political rights in election years, including freedom of speech (Davenport,
3
Consider Davenport’s ‘law of coercive responsiveness’ (Davenport,
2007a).
4
See also Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2005).
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1996). Whether or not autocrats engage in election violence, however, depends heavily on whether they feel
threatened by the political opposition; perceptions that
autocrats risk losing elections often prompt leaders to use
political terror against the opposition (Hafner-Burton,
Hyde & Jablonksi, 2014).
Not all autocracies are equally repressive. In fact, singleparty systems, especially those that involve more people
and organizations, are much less likely to use repression
than are other types of autocratic systems, such as personalist and military forms of governance. Single-party systems share some of the features of democracy that limit
the need to repress human rights as a means of social and
political control; they maintain control of the population
through political institutions and incorporate people into
the political process. Personalist dictators, by contrast, are
more isolated by their regime. There are fewer actors
involved in the process of governance. Leaders in these
systems are more likely to resort to repression to defend
their office against a public that has no institutionalized
way to influence the political process and so may turn
to violence (Davenport, 2007b).
It is not only the structure of governance that influences protections for human rights, but also the capacity
of state institutions. Sometimes terror is driven by political systems that create massive centralization of
unchecked power that provides both motives and opportunities for the state to use its capacity to crush those in
its way (Rummel, 1994). Other times, however, repression is a bureaucratic problem: weak and failing states do
not have the capacity to govern peaceably, despite their
leaders’ intentions. These states are incapable of stopping
actors operating on their territory from committing acts
of terror. They cannot stop agents of terror. They are too
poor to pay state employees, such as police officers or
prison guards, adequately to carry out the will of the
state. These employees lack oversight to do their jobs.
They may be tempted by bribery. Private actors thus get
away with crimes that the state cannot control. Supervision is weak and corruption is rampant, leaving little
opportunity or incentive for holding perpetrators
accountable (Butler, Gluch & Mitchell, 2007; Englehart, 2009). Capacity also goes both ways. A lack of state
capacity can create principal-agent problems that lead to
repression of human rights. At the same time, the infusion of capacity for violence can lead to human rights
violations. For instance, historically, arms imports into
developing countries have been strongly correlated with
an increase in political terror (Blanton, 1999).
While scholars have begun to converge on a common
understanding of the ways in which conflict and state
institutions motivate human rights violations, there is
much less consensus on the question of how to stop these
acts of terror.
Which strategies best prevent and reverse
human rights abuse?
This section explores key lessons learned, as well as central debates that have emerged, about how to prevent and
reverse human rights abuse. While there are many strategies for reducing human rights abuse, four have attracted
a great deal of scholarly attention: military intervention;
economic policies including trade, investment, aid, and
sanctions; international law; and information strategies.
The central insight about prevention efforts is that no single
tool works consistently to promote or protect human rights;
all tools have extensive scope conditions that limit their effectiveness. Often, the tools work best in tandem.
Military intervention
Because conflicts are a central cause of political terror,
stopping them has become a central tool for promoting
human rights. Sometimes, efforts to stop conflicts take
the form of military intervention. However, the actual
impact of these interventions on protection of human
rights has been mixed and there is no broad consensus
today about whether such interventions are effective or
defensible policy to spread human rights.5 Resolving the
debate is beyond the scope of this article. However, scholars have made recent strides in identifying some of the
scope conditions that make intervention most and least
effective, as well as in identifying the trade-offs such
interventions can provoke. For example, certain types
of peacekeeping efforts after civil wars – specifically,
those with a humanitarian purpose – encourage protections for the rights to be free from torture, disappearance,
extrajudicial killing, and political imprisonment, and also
increase the duration of peace (Peksen, 2012). However,
those same interventions have in many instances led to
increased violations of rights to free speech, freedom of
movement, and religion (Murdie & Davis, 2010).6
Women are especially vulnerable to wartime violence,
and thus scholars have devoted considerable attention to
how military intervention affects women’s rights. Historically, the effects of intervention depend on the country that does the intervening. Unilateral interventions led
by the USA are correlated with a decline in women’s
5
6
On diplomatic interventions, see Regan, Frank & Aydin (2009).
On the duration of peace, see Regan (2002); Fortna (2008).
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political and economic rights in the occupied country,
especially when interventions have supported or created
repressive regimes or created political chaos such as what
followed in Haiti after the reinstallation of President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1994. Harmful effects of intervention on human rights are not as readily apparent with
more multilateral efforts. Interventions by organizations
such as the UN have had generally a more positive influence on protections for women, perhaps because they
have been less likely to side with authoritarian rulers and
have more effectively mobilized pressure from a broader
international community (Peksen, 2011).
One of the most important lessons learned is that for
third-party interventions to improve human rights,
impartiality is essential. Otherwise, interventions tend
to increase the severity of mass killings in the immediate
intervention period – troops threaten perpetrators’ goals
but do not necessarily make violence more costly. Impartial interventions, by contrast, can eventually help reduce
violence by providing a security guarantee to both (or all)
sides of a conflict (Kathman & Wood, 2011). Interventions that actively support one side over others during
civil war change the balance of power inside the occupied
country in ways that shape combatants’ war strategies.
The factions receiving support have less need to use violence against civilians because foreign troops provide
resources and capabilities to their cause. When interveners take sides, however, weakened factions often ramp
up violence, committing more intentional and directed
killings of civilians in an effort to acquire capabilities and
command (Wood, Kathman & Gent, 2012).7 These
many scope conditions significantly reduce the situations
in which military intervention effectively promotes
human rights.
Military intervention is costly on all sides and difficult
to mobilize, and thus as a practical matter most of the
tools available for promoting human rights are those that
are less expensive to organize and deploy – in particular,
economic carrots and sticks.
Trade and investment
Another way to promote human rights is to promote
economic development. One of the key discoveries of
the past few decades is that it is possible to promote
human rights by encouraging economic openness and
growth through trade and investment, although there are
also some dangers for human rights associated with globalization. In many contexts, trade is clearly associated
7
See also Eck & Hultman (2007); Wood (2010).
with the development of better human rights practices;
for example, trade is associated with a decline in political
terror in developing countries where trade leads to
improved economic development, which leads to fewer
incentives for government repression over time
(Harrelson-Stephens & Callaway, 2003). One exception, however, is export-led economies, where trade does
appear to be correlated with the use of terror (HafnerBurton, 2005a). There is also evidence that foreign direct
investment has on balance a positive relationship with
protections for many human rights. For example, the
decision by multinational corporations to invest through
cross-border mergers and acquisitions is strongly correlated with improvements in a large array of rights,
including physical integrity rights, empowerment rights,
workers’ rights, and women’s economic rights, especially
in developing countries (Kim & Trumbore, 2010).8
Investment corresponds with lower rates of child
labor (Neumayer & de Soysa, 2005), and also with less
political terror (Apodaca, 2002; Richards, Gelleny &
Sacko, 2001). However, there is also some evidence that
multinationals at times collude with states to violate
human rights, especially those of workers (Meyer,
1996; Muchlinksi, 2001).
There are multiple explanations for these generally
positive associations. One possibility is that global trade
and investment are creating new, and larger, middle
classes (Meyer, 1996; Richards, Gelleny & Sacko,
2001). The presence of a strong middle class, in turn,
increases the pressure on governments to respect their
human rights. Another explanation is that the increase
in economic efficiency is enabling firms to produce at
lower costs, and thus to pass on lower prices to the consumer. And investors may be seeking stable locations
(Blanton & Blanton, 2007a,b). In order to attract investment, states may be putting policies into place to signal
to potential investors that their country is secure and that
the state respects the civil and political rights of the people living and working inside its borders. Moreover,
cross-border investment may be diffusing norms of
workers’ rights, as standards of health, safety, and even
pay and benefits from the developed world shape corporate practices inside developing partners (Milner, 2002).
An important qualification – or scope condition – is
that the positive effects of trade and investment on
human rights are conditional on the structure of the market place in society. Not all systems of exchange facilitate
equally the protection of human rights. Market-oriented
8
On investment more generally, see Hafner-Burton (2005a).
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economic development tends to reduce the need for state
repression of human rights – at least, it is correlated with
better protections for human rights. These are societies
where most people make their living and procure goods
and services by contracting through the marketplace.
The terms of contracts are in principle open to any consumer. Strangers interact. Law resolves contractual problems. And the protection of human rights is needed to
ensure that governments do not pursue discriminatory
policies against particular groups of individuals that
would impede the marketplace. By contrast, societies
structured on reciprocal exchange networks are more
dependent on personal contacts, in-groups, and favors.
The terms of exchange are not equal for everyone
but instead depend on the identities and relationships
of the people involved in the transaction. Discrimination
against out-groups is often inherently part of the
exchange system (Mousseau & Mousseau, 2008).
The effect of rising global economic integration on
human rights has been mixed. Many governments take
(and rely upon) loans from international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and
the World Bank. Some argue that these loans, which
come with a variety of conditions, are positively associated with the protection of human rights (Eriksen & de
Soysa, 2009). The more money a country borrows, the
more likely it is to promote the basic human rights of its
nationals.9 Others argue that these loans also typically
impose levels of fiscal austerity that can lead to cuts
in social programs that harm economic, social, and cultural rights; conditional lending and grants can also provoke domestic public dissent that can create further
incentives to violate civil and political rights (Sadasivam,
1997; Richards, Gelleny & Sacko, 2001; Abouharb &
Cingranelli, 2006, 2007). In particular, some work suggests that World Bank structural adjustment agreements
have a negative impact on human rights related to physical
integrity (e.g. political repression) because they exacerbate
socio-economic hardships and engender conflicts over
resources (Abouharb & Cingranelli, 2006). Such work,
however, is based heavily on correlations; the causal claims
have been hard to pin down. Aggressive lending arises in
countries with severe economic troubles, and the counterfactuals might be even worse not just for the economy but
also human rights. Similar problems bedevil work that has
tried to link aid with human rights.
Foreign aid
Because economic growth can beget protection for
human rights, there has been a keen interest in the use
of foreign economic aid as a strategy for encouraging
governments to avoid terror. Foreign aid is also a carrot
that can be readily withdrawn and thus is offered conditionally upon many kinds of reforms, including those
that protect human rights.
Scholars have learned that government aid policies are
extremely fickle. Aid conditions are not always implemented in practice. The United States, for example, has for
decades required (except in extraordinary circumstances)
that the president reduce or terminate security-related
assistance to any country that violates internationally
recognized human rights.10 In general, the USA has historically made reasonably good on its promise to reduce
military assistance to governments in violation of human
rights, though repression has hardly been the most important determinant of military aid – a lot of other political
and economic factors have played a much bigger role (Poe,
1991; Apodaca & Stohl, 1999).11 But the USA has not
consistently factored human rights into its decisions to
allocate other non-military forms of foreign economic and
development assistance. It has given economic assistance
to lots of governments guilty of political terror (Stohl, Carleton & Johnson, 1984; Cingranelli & Pasquarello, 1985;
Lebovic, 1988; Lai, 2003). In fact, since the end of the
Cold War, the United States has been more likely to offer
economic assistance to countries with poor human rights
records, and also to offer them more aid than it offers to
less repressive governments. This tendency has varied by
regime type. Specifically, the USA has given countries
transitioning towards democracy more aid when they
experienced serious human rights violations: those countries really needed help. By contrast, the United States has
rewarded autocracies for their efforts to improve human
rights, giving them more aid when human rights are better
protected (Demirel-Pegg & Moskowitz, 2009).
Europe has taken a similar approach to implementing
its own vast sets of conditionality policies for economic
and development assistance (Hafner-Burton, 2005b,
10
9
Eriksen & de Soysa (2009) also find evidence that repayment of
loans (when payback exceeds new loans) has a negative impact on
physical integrity rights. Their interpretation is that a painful
payback process does not cause the violation of human rights but
rather is a sign of domestic crisis which fuels repression.
The US Foreign Assistance Act of 1974.
Cingranelli & Pasquarello (1985) found only weak evidence that
human rights conditions in a country impacted the US decision to
extend military aid in 1982, and no relationship between the
amounts of aid they allocated. However, Carleton & Stohl (1987)
questioned the robustness of this study.
11
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Hafner-Burton
279
2009). Despite all the emphasis on human rights, severe
repression has not dissuaded the European Commission
or donor countries such as France from giving aid to governments. Colonial ties and political alliances seem to be
big driving forces behind decisions to give aid (Alesina &
Dollar, 2000).12 In fact, the United Kingdom, much like
the USA, has been more likely to give aid in the face of
widespread repression and terror (Carey, 2007). So have
Sweden, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain,
and Switzerland (Neumayer, 2003). Clearly, these relationships are complex.
A coherent message has not yet emerged on the precise effects of foreign aid or its conditionality on human
rights. That may reflect the fact that most research has
explored the effects of aid on development or, more
broadly, good governance.13 Among the few studies to
consider human rights specifically, there is evidence
pointing in both directions. European foreign aid
appears to have a positive association with some human
rights, bolstering the right to domestic movement, workers’ rights, and freedom of religion (Aronow, Carnegie &
Marinov, 2012). Meanwhile, US foreign aid in the postCold War period has a positive association with political
terror (Lee, 2011). There simply is not enough published
research to adjudicate between these views, and the lessons that emerge from the small number of studies that
exist are not easily comparable because they are drawn
from different time periods, actors, and rights.
human rights problems, increasing government repression
and harming innocent people (Pape, 1997; Weiss et al.,
1997; Cortright & Lopez, 2000; Li & Drury, 2004;
Andreas, 2005). On balance, there is no general consensus
as to whether sanctions work to promote human rights or
are a source of violations. However, one insight into
sanctions is that their effects on human rights may depend
on the nature of the sanction as well as the sanctioner.
Sanctions that are applied extensively are historically more
highly correlated with terror than are more selective sanctions that target specific leaders or institutions (Peksen,
2009). That may be because extensive sanctions cause
stress on ordinary citizens that undermine their economic
security and provoke them to dissent.
Sanctions can successfully yield concessions to
improve human rights in some circumstances (Hovi,
Huseby & Sprinz, 2005). The exact circumstances are
still unclear, though there are some common scope conditions emerging from the literature. The target state
must face economic hard times and be strongly dependent on the sanctioner. There cannot be corresponding
military actions. And the sanctioner can reasonably
afford to carry out the policy swiftly and credibly
(Hufbauer, Schott & Elliott, 1990; Hafner-Burton,
2009).14 These situations, of course, are probably quite
limited and suggest general skepticism about the reach
of these policies, especially to change the deep structural
problems that incite repression.
Economic sanctions
The inverse of economic carrots such as aid is sticks. For
decades scholars have studied sanctions and whether they
have their intended effects – a question of extreme
importance in the protection of human rights. Understanding whether and how sanctions work requires
understanding what motivates governments and other
donors to threaten and implement sanctions. It also
requires understanding the effects of sanctions on their
targets. Sanctions can improve human rights, starving a
repressive regime of the resources necessary to sustain
a strong military state or support agents of violence
(Martin, 1992; Blanchard & Ripsman, 1999; Hovi,
Huseby & Sprinz, 2005). Sanctions can also exacerbate
International law
Alongside military and economic efforts are legal efforts
to promote human rights. Legal institutions for the promotion and protection of human rights are multiplying
but their effects are difficult to distinguish and not
always positive (Hafner-Burton & Ron, 2007). One
facet of law that has been the subject of much attention
is the growing international human rights treaty regime,
which is now comprised of hundreds of legal instruments
(Elliot, 2011). The effect of these laws on human rights
is still a source of discussion.15 There is some evidence
that international human rights legal institutions,
treaties, declarations, and procedures correlate with
14
12
More generally, donors tend to use aid to punish human rights abuses
when the violations have a negative consequence on the donor, the
violations are highly publicized, and the target of sanctions does not
have close political ties to the donor. See Nielsen (2013).
13
On the effects of aid on development, democracy, and governance,
see Dunning (2004); Knack (2004); Easterly (2006); Rajan &
Subramanian (2007).
However, in another study on the effectiveness of sanctions, Pape
(1997) finds that only 4% of the 116 cases qualified as effective by
Hufbauer, Schott & Elliott (1990), and actually resulted in
‘significant political concessions’ by the target country, calling into
question the evidentiary basis of their theory of effectiveness.
15
For an in-depth review of this debate, see Hafner-Burton (2012,
2013). See also Neumayer (2005); Powell & Staton (2009); Hawkins
& Jacoby (2010).
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improved protections for human rights inside the countries that participate. For example, membership in the
ICC correlates with a short-term civil war hiatus or termination for those that face violence but cannot make
credible commitments at home to scale down hostility.
Membership is also associated with longer-term peace
accords (Simmons & Danner, 2010).16 The norms
established by the Helsinki process (and its Final Act)
helped ensure the failure of communism in the former
Eastern bloc (Thomas, 2001). And, among the group
of partially democratic, transitional states, ratification
of the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights (ICCPR) – a core UN treaty – corresponds to
improved religious freedom and fair trial practices after
ratification (though has no such effect in other types of
countries) (Simmons, 2009).
Yet there is also evidence that many of these institutions do not correspond well to observable improvements in many human rights. Ratification of treaties
such as the ICCPR has no clearly discernible effect (at
least generally) on protections for physical integrity
rights (Keith, 1999; Hathaway, 2002), though scholars
are still debating this finding, largely on methodological
grounds, and there are several explanations for these
divergent findings, including the use of different data
samples, research methodologies, and scope conditions.17 The core international human rights treaties –
which may have some positive impact in stable or consolidating democratic regimes or states with strong civil
societies – appear least effective in very repressive states
where legal protection is most needed (Hafner-Burton
& Tsutsui, 2007). At best, the literature is growing a
consensus that the effect of international law on human
rights is not universally positive or negative but highly
dependent on the situation.
These debates extend to another facet of human rights
law: transitional legal justice. Transitional justice can
encompass many different types of policies, from apologies and truth commissions to criminal prosecutions and
legal amnesty for perpetrators (Grodsky, 2009). These
types of policies are spreading worldwide among states
struggling through difficult transitions characterized by
massive violence and terror, though different policies are
used in different ways (Kim, 2012). Thus far, amnesties
are the most common form of transitional legal justice in
16
However, Chapman & Chaudoin (2013) argue that patterns of
participation (or selection) bias in the court indicate that its
influence has likely been overstated and at best is inconclusive.
17
For a critique, see Goodman & Jinks (2003).
use, especially in contexts (such as El Salvador and
Mozambique) recovering from civil war, where former
regime opponents are given a free pass from prosecution
in order to reduce their incentives to disrupt a peaceful
transition out of fear of incarceration, exile or death.
With a few exceptions, courts almost never prosecute
state agents of violence when they are still in power;
rebels face trial much more often than do state actors
involved in civil war (Olsen, Payne & Reiter, 2010).
There is disagreement about the effects of these policies too, especially those based on a punitive legal (rather
than conciliatory) model of justice. There are clearly
cases where trials have inflamed conflict and prompted
factions to resist peace agreements. For example, the
International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia disrupted the peace process between the government of
Macedonia and rebels accused of committing atrocities
(Snyder & Vinjamuri, 2003/04; Ku & Nzelibe, 2006).
However, the general trend seems to be that there is not
a consistently negative relationship between trials and
human rights, and that the relationship is probably
mixed. Trials do not appear to have undermined democracy or sparked more conflict in Latin America; there, the
countries that have undergone human rights trials tend
to have better human rights protections than countries
that never prosecuted their perpetrators (Sikkink &
Walling, 2007; Sikkink, 2011). However, it is not clear
that trials are causing better protections. In other places
that are recovering from civil war, including Cambodia,
Sierra Leone, and East Timor, criminal prosecutions
appear not to have harmed human rights either, but they
also have done little to directly improve them (Meernik,
Nichols & King, 2010). It makes sense that trials located
outside the country in transition – for instance, the
ad hoc tribunals on Yugoslavia and Rwanda – have had
more difficulty earning legitimacy among locals and thus
probably have had little impact. However, even trials
located in country, such as those in Cambodia and Sierra
Leone, have had difficulty gaining legitimacy and have
struggled for effect (Stensrud, 2009). There is no intelligible explanation for why trials appear to have a different
effect in Latin America than elsewhere.
Despite disagreement over the exact degree of influence these legal mechanisms have on human rights in
countries grappling through transition, scholars can
almost certainly agree that state accountability (such as
through reparations or apologies) and individual criminal accountability (such as through trials) are rarely
enough to reach a truly peaceful transition. Alongside
these two approaches is another approach that may also
be valuable: social accountability. Social accountability
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281
includes procedures such as truth commissions, education, and the exposure of information about past atrocities. Its purpose is to foster public recognition of atrocity
and delegitimize the pervasive ideologies that once fostered human rights abuse (Subotic, 2011). However,
there is evidence that truth commissions tend to have a
negative impact on human rights unless they are used
in combination with more legalized mechanisms such
as trials and amnesties (Olsen et al., 2010); again, the
scope conditions are a source of debate.
Information strategies
Alongside military interventions, economic policy, and
legal measures, the politics of information has been a
focus of research because the generation and spread
of reported facts are at the center of many different
strategies for the promotion and protection of human
rights. Advocates work hard to generate information
to uncover abuses, shame abusers, mold public opinion,
and motivate governments to intervene on behalf of
victims. Information strategies are often what trigger
the use of these other tools for human rights promotion
(Keck & Sikkink, 1998). Of course, there is no such
thing as objective information about human rights
abuse, and scholars have only recently begun to learn
about the ways people and organizations produce and
convey information about repression. Several key lessons have emerged that help to pin down how information actually causes changes in human rights and which
actors have leverage over how information is gathered
and used.
Public opinion can motivate advocacy for the promotion of human rights – if citizens are rallied around an
issue, they can inspire state representatives and other
actors to participate in political action to improve human
rights. Human rights conditions do shape how people
perceive the general human rights situation in a country.
The more that watchdogs, such as Amnesty International, report problems related to the use of political terror in a country, the more people in that country tend to
perceive that human rights abuses are a problem – that is
apparently true for European and Latin American countries though not for Asia. However, not all people have
the same perceptions of the same human rights situation.
People living in richer countries tend to have a more positive perception that human rights are being respected.
The same is true for educated people, older people, and
also men; these groups tend to perceive human rights as
better protected, whereas women, younger people, and
less educated people tend to have more negative
perceptions about the same situation (Carlson &
Listhaug, 2007). In other words, how people evaluate a
human rights situation depends on both the context of
the situation and the individual person.18
NGOs are key producers and disseminators of information about human rights. Many have special legitimacy as watchdogs because they are independent from
governments (Thakur, 1994). Many supply information
to journalists in an effort to shape the media’s coverage
(Bob, 2005; Hopgood, 2006). Scholars are only now
learning about the politics (and perhaps, also, economics) involved in these choices. If Amnesty International
reports that a country is experiencing political terror,
media magazines such as the Economist and Newsweek are
likely to publish articles about the abuse. Yet, when
repression takes place in populous, poorer countries, or
when it is most severe, Amnesty’s efforts to shape the
Western media’s reporting on human rights do not seem
to get much traction: the media underreport on these
cases. Maybe there is already so much attention focused
on these cases that the specific effects of Amnesty’s good
works are muted by competition for exposure by other
organizations (Ramos, Ron & Thoms, 2007). Or maybe
information about repression is harder for journalists to
obtain in those environments, or poor countries have less
international influence than the rich (Chang, 1998).19
Either way, a key lesson is that the success of advocates’
efforts to spread human rights through the dissemination
of information depends in part on uptake by institutions
such as the media that operate according to incentives
other than the promotion of rights.
Scholars have also learned that there are dangers to
these efforts to inform media publicity of abuse. Because
NGOs (and other advocacy organizations) can have such
a powerful effect on media coverage of and government
reactions to repression if they can raise public awareness,
and because they compete for funding and public attention, some may need to dramatize information. For
example, in Liberia, commonly reported facts about sexual violence during the country’s 14-year civil war – that
75% or more of women were raped – turn out not to be
accurate. Detailed surveys and interviews place that
number at 10–20%. These short-term incentives to present information in a dramatic fashion to focus attention
on the issue are at odds with the long-term needs of these
18
See also Anderson, Regan & Ostergard (2002); Anderson et al.
(2005).
19
For analysis by region, see Hafner-Burton & Ron (2013).
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journal of PEACE RESEARCH 51(2)
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advocacy organizations to maintain credibility as objective observers (Cohen & Green, 2012).
The critical implication of this research is that human
rights information and perceptions are neither neutral nor
objective. Whether it is the media reporting, NGOs
shaming, or how publics perceive and explain human
rights abuses, there are clear patterns to biases in how people think and make statements about abuse. That people
and institutions are biased in their perceptions and reporting of human rights is a challenge for a promotion regime
that is based first and foremost on the collection and dissemination of information as the key mechanism of diffusing norms, shaming perpetrators, and swaying actors to
intervene on behalf of human rights.
New waves of scholarship
Social science inquiry into the causes of human rights
abuse and the tools of human rights promotion has come
a very long way in a short time span. The research has
evolved from a small number of qualitative investigations, often inspired by activist involvement rather than
the sobriety of scientific inference. Today, the field is
notable for a large and diverse set of studies drawing
up many different methods, theories, and approaches.
Clearly a lot more remains to be done. It is difficult to
predict exactly how the social science of human rights
will further evolve in the coming years, but I see on the
horizon at least two prospective shifts.
The first is a shift to become more interdisciplinary by
undertaking collaborations between scholars across
fields. Scholars tend to work in the comfort of their own
discipline, but human rights is like many other contemporary issues (e.g. environmental degradation) in that no
single discipline has all the answers. Defining and protecting human rights implicates matters of culture, thus
anthropology can be essential to the study of human
behavior. Understanding the mental and behavioral
characteristics of individuals and groups that perpetrate
abuses is an essential first step in devising strategies to
deter that behavior; thus psychology has a central role.
So too do the fields of criminology, economics, history,
law, political science, and sociology, which all make
essential contributions to this discussion. Working
together across fields will provide new research ideas that
surpass the scope of a single discipline and advance
deeper knowledge. As in all other fields where there is
great promise for interdisciplinary research, the challenge
in actually realizing this potential is for scholars to learn
the language, questions, and methods of other fields so
that actual productive collaboration is feasible.
The second shift, which is enabled by the first, is a
move towards more methodologically diverse and sophisticated research approaches, especially those designed to
look beyond empirical correlations at the evaluation of
causality. This shift is already under way as scholars in
growing numbers are applying experiments – many
derived from psychology – that help identify exactly how
policymakers and voters reason. Also important are
improved statistical techniques – many derived from economics – that allow for more precision in evaluating the
effects of different human rights promotion tools.20
These two shifts, in tandem, will require scholars to
develop new skills and partnerships. But they could,
along the way, also help increase the relevance of social
science research to policymaking decisions that have
practical impacts on the promotion of human rights.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the editors, Jack S Levy and Halvard
Buhaug, David Victor and several anonymous reviewers
for helpful comments on various drafts of this article;
Linda Wong and Steve Carlson for invaluable research
assistance; and the Laboratory on International Law and
Regulation at UCSD for support of this project.
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EMILIE M HAFNER-BURTON, b. 1973; PhD in political
science (University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2003); Professor,
University of California San Diego School of International
Relations and Pacific Studies and Department of Political
Science and Co-Director of the Laboratory on International
Law and Regulation (2009– ); previously Professor of Politics and Public Policy at Princeton University, research
scholar at Stanford Law School, MacArthur fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation,
and postdoctoral prize research fellow at Nuffield College,
Oxford University; recent books include Forced to Be Good:
Why Trade Agreements Boost Human Rights (Cornell University Press, 2009) and Making Human Rights a Reality
(Princeton University Press, 2013); she is recipient of the
2012 Karl Deutsch award.
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